Field of the Invention
The invention relates to the field of managing, evaluating and visualizing discussions and arguments or related data and, more particularly, to computer systems, computer-implemented methods and user interfaces for structuring, evaluating and relating assertions of one or more discussions.
Description of the Related Art
It has become very common and increasingly important that users or readers of publications in the internet, such as articles of online newspapers can post comments regarding a published article, paper or blog. Typically, internet publications such as articles or blogs provide a commenting or chatting option, in which registered or unregistered users can write comments entries. Typically, such comments entries are displayed next to or below the article in the order as created or posted by the users. It is also known that a user can write a comment entry in reply to an existing displayed entry. This may be visualized by a treelike structure showing that a comment entry has been entered in response to an existing one. This often leads to a very long list or tree of entries, which are typically listed in chronological order. Message boards or forums are often part of a website allowing a group of users to elaborate on various aspects of the website's topic.
In order to enhance readability it is typically possible that readers or editors can collapse an entry to thereby only show the top line or first few words of an entry, hide or emphasize entries. However, those existing commenting technologies have the disadvantage that it is very difficult and cumbersome to follow the discussion, as very often entries that are just personal opinions, nods of agreement, interesting side stories, will be injected and cannot be distinguished from the actual arguments of the discussion. It is very time consuming for readers to read comment trees. Additionally, typical forum software products allow only for linear entries, one entry after another, which leads to complex quoting of previous entries or parts of their contents. If multiple replies are added to a specific existing entry in a treelike structure, the purpose of an entry and its usefulness in the debate could be confusing for the reader. FIG. 1 illustrates exemplary a website 100 with a publication 110 like a newspaper article. The website offers a commenting function 120 allowing readers to add a comment, typically by selecting an input field 130 allowing the user to add or create a new comment. Shown in FIG. 1 are exemplary existing comments 140 to 145. In the illustrated example, the comments 140 to 144 are minimized or collapsed while comment 145 has been maximized showing its complete text 150. The expanded comment 145 also allows a reader to create a reply comment using input 160 and to collapse or minimize the comment using input button 170. The illustrated example shows a treelike structure of the comments in that comments 140, 141 and 145 are comments at the same highest level. Comments 142 and 143 however are comments in reply to comment 141. Comment 144 in turn has been added in reply to comment 143.
In known systems, such comments are typically displayed in their chronological order meaning that comment 145 was added after comments 141 and 140 were created. If there are many comments that have been added in reply to the same existing comment, it will be difficult for a reader to understand and easily recognize the purpose or relevance of the comments. A difficulty is to answer to two comments, for example comments 142 and 143. In this case, it is necessary to input the same comment twice, in reply to comment 142 and again in reply to comment 143. A new comment is either in reply to an existing comment or a new comment at the highest level of the illustrated tree structure.
There is a further a need in existing computer-implemented methods, user interfaces and systems that allow for an evaluation and moderation of a discussion. This applies to discussions between multiple participants, such as commenting systems or blogs. This, however, also applies to “discussions” representing a collection of pertinent arguments for a specific topic, such as pros and cons of a given issue. The latter can be used by just one user, or one group of users, to maintain pros and cons for a specific issue, topic, or task. It would further be desirable for a user to be able to understand whether or not a specific comment is at all important, and if so whether it supports or disproves other assertions of a discussion, in particular in distributed systems like the internet. At present, no solution has been proposed in this respect. If at all, individual comments in a “comments section” on a website can be ranked in that readers either select a “like” or “dislike” button that jointly determines whether the majority of readers likes or dislikes a specific comment. However, in such systems very often funny comments become the most emphasized comments, but not the most sincere and best researched arguments. The system is merely a majority voted system and the most popular comments often become the “best” comments even if the comment has little or no value to the point of discussion. The known like/dislike or +/− system for user voting only determine the most popular comments, which are often merely the most funny entries. It would also be desirable to have a system that allows distinguishing between what individual subgroups would “like” or even better, considering to being most relevant. No such system exists today.